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A man stepped out from behind my mirror.

My gun tracked toward him.

Declan filled the line.

No shot. I shifted left.

Declan shifted instinctively with me, still trying to see what I was seeing.

Still blocking him.

He stole into motion, slow at first, moving like molasses, so unhurried I had to measure him against the edge of the mirror to be sure he was moving.

My breath stopped.

I knew that face. I didn’t know how I knew it at first.

My body did. Then my mind caught up.

Abject terror took hold of my body.

Wade Mercer.

My knees went soft. For one terrible second I wasn’t eighteen years old in my bedroom with a gun in my hand.

I was nine.

And hell had found me again.

His progress was so leisurely it caught me off guard, and my mind couldn’t quite hold on to the idea that he was real, at first. He had the strange movement and timing of something from a nightmare.

I took another half step. Still no shot.

Declan was turning now.

And then Wade sped up, quick as a skip in reality.

He moved like murder.

Something smashed into the side of Declan’s head.

He didn’t have a shot. Wade caught him from behind before he saw him.

Declan’s gun hit the floor. Spun once. Slid beneath my bed.

Declan staggered.

Wade went for him again.

Declan turned. And caught him.

They hit the wall hard enough to shake the framed picture beside my desk.

Wade had surprise.

Declan had forty pounds on him. Maybe more.

Chief drove him backward. Wade’s shoulder hit the dresser.